Waow so crazy that I’m gonna be a year 4 soon. I’m actually gonna miss school a lot despite how much I dislike studying and exams. 😥
ACC1002X: Financial Accounting
I took accounting in secondary school before. it gave me nightmares (i mean literally) even though I kind of enjoyed how logical and simple it was. This mod in NUS is definitely a lot more in-depth than what i learnt in sec sch (i mean…)!
I think this was the most enjoyable mod I had this sem because of how it felt easy to handle and understand. You don’t really need to memorize much if you understand it, and the calculations consist of basic math. What’s important though, is constant practice, practice and practice, because this mod’s filled with really smart students who have an edge in math (and/or have taken accounting before in the past)!
The content is quite applicable to real life as well. It was a good intro to bonds and investing, and I managed to pick up some basic financial knowledge.
My lecturer was Dr. Aimee Shih, she’s one of the best lecturers I’ve had! She breaks down accounting concepts into simple absorbable forms for us and when she presents it’s like she has the whole script flawlessly memorized in her head (better than some TED presenters). She doesn’t use fillers like ‘erm’ or ‘er’ lol (my friend calls her a robot because of that that but to me she’s really nice, lively and engaging).
There’s a textbook that was solely created for this module too, but I didn’t actually read the content cause I felt her slides (and google) were sufficient. It’ll be super beneficial to practise all the practice questions she assigns (even the optional ones!). She provides a sample paper before mid terms and finals so we get used to her style of questions, but the sample paper was so much easier than the actual paper T__T
The mod consisted of:
- Midterm test (30%)
- Final examination (40%)
- Group project (20%)
- Class participation (10%)
I didn’t know anyone in my tutorial but I was lucky to get a nice enthu group (it’s 2-3 people per group) for my group project. We also have to present the week’s tutorial questions as a group once during the sem!
Midterms were MCQs only (some questions were tough and time management could be a possible issue too). Finals were MCQs and short answer questions.
Rating – 1 being least and 5 being most.
Difficulty in understanding: 3/5
Workload: 2/5
Self-study time required: 3/5
GEK1049: Narrative
I have a love-hate (during the sem mostly hate) relationship with this mod. I didn’t research properly when taking this mod because I was travelling around japan and ran out of points for the gems I initially wanted to take. 😥 so this was a last resort cause it was cheap oops hehe.
Lectures consisted of the prof going through the day’s content, and almost each week there’s always lots and lots of video clips from various movies peppered throughout the lecture lolol. They’re amusing but some of them i haven’t watched before and he shows the endings to them sometimes. ;__ ;
Each week’s content is about a different aspect of narrative, such as characters, genre, plot, etc. This belongs more to EL (english language) than literature, so a lot of what we learn was quite technical.
Tutorials consisted of us going through some pre-assigned questions that we were supposed to attempt beforehand. They usually have video clips that we are supposed to watch as well. Watch it so you don’t feel lost during tutorials!
Assessment:
- Tutorial performance: 15%
- IVLE contributions: 10%
- Lecture inputs: 15%
- Term essay: 20%
- Final exam: 40%
I didn’t do the assigned readings cause they were almost exactly the same as his 100+ pages lecture slides lolol (a lot of them filled with video clips).
Lecture inputs consisted of us going onto a website during lecture and answering questions that he gives live, it was more of participation marks than accuracy marks as a lot of the questions he asked were those without clear answers (as with a lot of concepts in this mod).
The final paper consisted of mcqs and short essay questions. If you have been keeping up with the lectures and everything else so far it should be quite doable!
One thing I really liked about this mod was that it introduced me to some new music and a deeper appreciation for short films and classic movies and novels. The professor really loves his narratives and I guess it rubbed off on me.
Rating – 1 being least and 5 being most.
Difficulty in understanding: 2/5
Workload: 3/5
Self-study time required: 3/5
PL3287: Lab in Clinical/Abnormal Psychology
Prof Catherine Tang taught this mod. If you haven’t heard, she’s infamous for being quite strict in giving grades and in her teaching.
Personally, I think she can be friendly, encouraging and oddly funny at times lol. But her marking is still quite stringent.
The mod doesn’t actually have much to do with clinical/abnormal, just that we were free to pick any topic relevant to the field.
We were the first batch in this mod that could do our project in pairs (the previous ones all did it solo). It helped a looot not going through everything alone (which some of us will eventually experience for honours thesis gulps). We basically went through all the steps of doing a thesis, no skipping unlike some other labs. From the ethics proposal, to the presentation of the proposal, to collecting data from 100+ participants, to analyzing and finally writing the 30-page report and presenting our results. T__ T
It was my most stressful mod for this sem. But I think I learnt a lot of useful skills (and also managed to brush up on my rusty stats skills *coughs*) that’ll be particularly helpful for my upcoming thesis! Also, I missed the first week of lessons cause of exchange in japan…and it pulled down my grade badly. 😦 She said that a few marks difference can make a couple of grades differences. :(( So don’t do lab if you’ll miss any of the lessons even if you think week 1 was like nothing! (yup even the attendance affected my grade drastically)
Rating – 1 being least and 5 being most.
Difficulty in understanding: 3/5
Workload: 4/5
Self-study time required: 5/5
PL4207: Social Psychology: Theories and Methods
Prof Eddie Tong taught this mod! He’s well-loved by students so the mod was quite popz and quite expensivez. (;_ 😉 it’s basically like an intro to social psych except it’s condensed into weekly 3-hour lecture-ish sessions with 1-2 discussion questions scattered within. A lot of the chapters were revision of social psych topics so it’ll help greatly if you harness gr8 knowledge about social psych!
He cancelled the readings for finals during the last few weeks of the sem, so we didn’t have to mug the readings lol. :’) (he did the same thing for pl3252 emotions!) it still helps if you do the readings though!
His essay questions for mid terms and finals can be quite broad and require you to piece together bits from each week of his lessons in a creative manner while showing eloquent writing (which i cannot achieve sob sob sobss)
There’s also a group presentation during week 13 where we have to present about a creative research question that we came up with, along with prev literature and methods (also same for pl3252 emotions).
Lessons are enjoyable but I always find it difficult to speak up for participation marks even though I do have relevant thoughts in my head 😥 a lot to do with internal inertia…
Rating – 1 being least and 5 being most.
Difficulty in understanding: 2/5
Workload: 3/5
Self-study time required: 3/5
PL4880J: The Right and Left Brain
I love this mod. It’s super confusing cause we read papers of conflicting conclusions and it’s disheartening to see that after so many years we still don’t know the answers. And it’s strange that we are using our brains in an effort to discover more about..our brains.
Dr. T is a really chirpy, bright, encouraging prof! Too bad she has left NUS and we were her last batch of students :(((( so I’m not sure whether this mod will still be active from now on.
Each week we had to randomly be paired with a classmate and discuss each other’s papers, then present about it to the class. Despite my intense fear of presentations, I looked forward to friday’s and this mod somehow made me happy(??? much M).
Finals were open book which was great, but it wasn’t super duper useful cause the questions were basically general ones like ‘what is the meaning of life’ JK no it was general stuff about our left and right cerebral hemispheres. So you had to provide your own take on the collation of other researchers’ conflicting papers. I was so frustrated the days before finals because it was all just so confusing and I couldn’t make sense of it (i mean…even the researchers can’t). But I guess it kept me actively thinking and questioning what I’m learning instead of just taking in everything as it is. to me, that’s the crux of what I’ve learnt as a skill upon coming to uni (in short: uni made me cynical of many things).
Rating – 1 being least and 5 being most.
Difficulty in understanding: 5/5
Workload: 3/5
Self-study time required: 4/5
Yr 1 Sem 1: x (pl1101e, js1101e, laj1201, sc1101e, el1101e)
Yr 1 Sem 2: x (el2201, pl2131, pl3232, pl3235, laj2201)
Yr 2 Sem 1: x (pl2132, pl3236, pl3240, gek1508, laj2202)
Yr 2 Sem 2: x (sss1207, pl3252, pl3234, pl3233, laj2203)
Yr 4 Sem 1: x (gek1900, lab1201, pl4228, pl4206)
Yr 4 Sem 2: x (pl4401, pl4880g)
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